■ i S CRITIC AT LARGE by Byron Belt I i 87 and 84, and Great Everyone talks too much about age, onstrated the sort of musical virtuosity but when one Sunday boasts rare per­ and immaculate ensemble that have formances of great music gloriously per­ placed them at the top of the chamber formed, and 87-year-old Leopold Stokow- grouigroups in this age. A performance not ski is in charge of the matinee and a i.p'bebe missed! newly §4 Artur Rubinstein performs at ArturArt Rubinstein truly needs no night, then age seems to matter. f Ccommentomh at this stage. The man is com­ Not that either great artist is “youth-/ rpletelpletely old-fashioned: He never learned ful.” Each is in the full bloom of a how to make an ugly sound or an un­ career spanning three-quarters of a cen­ musical phrase. He is a musical aristo­ tury, and to imply that their music­ crat, and the world needs him desperate­ making is “youthful” would be a sin. ly. In music of Chopin and Schumann his Both 'Stokowski and Rubenstein have piano simply sang with joy and majesty, mellowed and gained in insight through and Philharmonic Hall resounded with the years, and we may only be humble the appropriate acclaim. Long live the and grateful to be able to feast at the King! $ feet of their towering artistry. Stokowski conducted his ever-finerX ’YOUTH DID pretty well this weekend American Symphony in a Carnegie Hall too, and may be heard at the last of the matinee yesterday which, happily, will Philharmonic’s subscription set tonight be repeated at 8:30 on Tuesday. Since it at 7:30. Seiji Ozawa is the conductor, is in an all-Beethoven affair, the expected and his performance of the Mahler First full house materialized, and wise enough Symphony, with the added “Blumine” to recognize greatness when it heard it. movement, is his finest New York ac­ The Maestro led a splendid perform­ complishment to date. ance of the Overture to “Thee Creatures Ozawa may have skipped a repeat or of Prometheus,” and a truly Promenthan two, but his interpretation of Mahler’s interpretation of the “Eroica” Symphony. youthful heart-on-sleeve epic was al­ The symphony, the third in the form of most invariably right in concept, and gen­ Beethoven, and the most revolutionary erally magnificent in realization. Ot of all his early works, received a per­ course the players of the Philharmonic formance of structural grandeur and deep are heirs of the composer himself, but eloquence. only the careful, inspired conducting of the young conductor of the San Fran­ STOKOWSKI HAS always excelled in cisco Symphony could have resulted in his interpretation of the dramatic odd- such a performance. numbered of Beethoven’s nine sym­ The concert opened with a gentle, gra­ phonies, so the power of the third did cious performance of the early K. 136 Di­ not come as a surprise. What did sur­ vertimento for Strinugs of Mozart, and prise, and most delightfully was the per­ included a rather feminine and tepid in­ formance of the oft-maligned Triple Con­ terpretation of the spunky Ravel Piano certo for Piano, Violin, Cello and Or­ Concerto, with Bruno Leonardo Gelber chestra. as soloist. The stellar soloist in the Beethoven At Hunter College on Friday evening Triple Concerto were the members of the tenor Ernst Haefliger replaced ailing Beaux Arts Trio—pianist Menachem Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a beautiful Pressler, violinist Isidore Cohen and cell­ program of Baroque music with flutist ist Bernard Greenhouse. Yesterday mark­ Jean-Pierre Rampal and harpsichordist ed their New York orchestra debut, al­ Robert Veyron-Lacroix. The tenor was though their chamber programs at Hunter especially marvelous in arias of Rameau and elsewhere are justly celebrated. and Lully. Recent performances of the Triple by Istomin-Rose-Stern and the Berenboim- duPre-Zuckerman trios simply paled next to that of the Beaux Arts. With Stokow­ ski leanding a buoyant orchestra, the. three, individually and collectively, dem­.